1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data management server, a data management system, a data management method, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) guidelines have been proposed to make interoperability possible for content such as images, music, and the like in a home network that interconnects home audio-visual (AV) devices, personal computers (PCs), and the like. The DLNA guidelines define a digital media server (DMS, hereinafter called simply a “content server”) that is provided with content storage and transmission functions and a digital media player (DMP, hereinafter called simply a “client device”) that is provided with a content playback function.
The client device, in order to acquire and play back content, must search for desired content on a plurality of the content servers that are connected to the home network. The client device that complies with the DLNA guidelines can search for the content only on one content server at a time. Moreover, the client device cannot search for the content on a content server for which the power supply is not turned on.
To address this problem, a metadata collection system is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. JP-A-2004-102767 in which a metadata collection server collects metadata for the content that is stored on the plurality of the content servers and the client device can search for the content that is stored on the plurality of the content servers just by accessing the metadata collection server.